Unwritten Literature of the Hopi — Chapter IX, Hopi Myths and Traditions and Some Ceremonies Based Upon Them, Part 2
=Flute Ceremony and Tradition= This Flute ceremony is one of the loveliest and most impressive in the whole Hopi calendar.
And because it is one which most clearly illustrates this thesis, some detail of the ceremony will be given.
From the accounts of many observers that of Hough[25] has been chosen: "On the first day the sand altar is made and at night songs are begun.
Within the kiva the interminable rites go on, and daily the cycle of songs accompanied with flutes is rehearsed.
A messenger clad in an embroidered kilt and anointed with honey, runs, with flowing hair, to deposit prayer-sticks at the shrines, encircling the fields in his runs and coming nearer the pueblo on each circuit.
During the seventh and eighth days a visit is made to three important springs where ceremonies are held, and on the return of the priests they are received by an assemblage of the Bear and Snake Societies, the chiefs of which challenge them and tell them that if they are good people, as they claim, they can bring rain.
[Footnote 25: Hough, Walter, Op.
cit.
, pp. 156-158. ] "After an interesting interchange of ceremonies, the Flute priests return to their kiva to prepare for the public dance on the morrow.
When at 3:00 a. m.
the belt of Orion is at a certain place in the heavens, the priests file into the plaza, where a cottonwood bower has been erected over the shrine called the entrance to the underworld.
Here the priests sing, accompanied with flutes, the shrine is ceremonially opened and prayer-sticks placed within, and they return to the kiva.
At some of the pueblos there is a race up the mesa at dawn on the ninth day, as in other ceremonies.
"On the evening of the ninth day the Flute procession forms and winds down the trail to the spring in order: A leader, the Snake maiden, two Snake youths, the priests, and in the rear a costumed warrior with bow and whizzer.
At the spring they sit on the south side of the pool, and as one of the priests plays a flute the others sing, while one of their number wades into the spring, dives under water, and plants a prayer-stick in the muddy bottom.
Then taking a flute he again wades into the spring and sounds it in the water to the four cardinal points.
Meanwhile sunflowers and cornstalks have been brought to the spring by messengers.
Each priest places the sunflowers on his head and each takes two cornstalks in his hands and the procession, two abreast, forms to ascend the mesa.
A priest draws a line on the trail with white corn meal and across it three cloud symbols.
The Flute children throw the offerings they hold in their hands upon the symbols, followed by the priests who sing to the sound of the flutes.
[Illustration: Figure 5. --Flute Ceremony at Michongnovi.
--Courtesy Arizona State Museum.
] "The children pick the offerings from the ground with sticks held in their hands, and the same performance is repeated till they stand again in the plaza on the mesa before the cottonwood bower, where they sing melodious songs then disperse."
The foregoing description of Hough's is an account of the Walpi ceremony, where we find only one Flute fraternity.
Each of the other villages has two fraternities, the Blue Flute and the Drab Flute.
The Flute Ceremony at Mishongnovi is perhaps the most impressive example of this pageant as given by the double fraternity.
Dr. Byron Cummings reports this Mishongnovi ceremony as having several interesting variations from the Walpi report given above.
(See Figure 5. ) [Illustration: Figure 6. --Flute Boy before Costuming.
--Courtesy Arizona State Museum.
] On the ninth day women were observed sweeping the trail to the spring with meticulous care, in preparation for the double procession which came down at about 1:30 in the afternoon.
All the costuming was done at the spring--body painting, putting on of ceremonial garments and arranging of hair.
The fathers of the Flute maidens brushed and arranged their hair for them and put on their blankets.
If a girl had no father, her uncle did this for her.
There were two Flute Maids and a Flute Boy (See Figure 6) who walked between them, in each of the two fraternities.
Even this ceremonial costuming was accompanied by solemn singing.
When all was ready the priests sat on the edge of the pool with their legs hanging over, and the two maids and the boy sat behind them on a terrace of the bank.
The Blue Flute fraternity occupied one side of the pool and the Drab Flute fraternity another.
Many songs were sung to the strange, plaintive accompaniment of the flute players.
After a while an old priest waded into the pool and walked around it in ever-narrowing circles till he reached the center, where he sank into the water and disappeared for a dramatically long moment and came up with a number of ceremonial objects in his hands, including a gourd bottle filled with water from the depths of the spring.
It was late afternoon by the time all the songs had been sung, and evening when the two processions had finished their ceremonial ascent to the mesa top, pausing again and again as the old priest went ahead and drew his symbolic barrier of meal and the three rain clouds across the path, which were to be covered with the pahos of the Flute children, then taken up and moved on to the next like symbol.
The old priest led the procession, the three children behind him, then the flute players, followed by the priests bearing emblems, and the priest with the bull roarer at the end of the line.
Each fraternity preserved its own formation.
Having reached the village plaza they marched to the Kisa and deposited their pahos and ceremonial offerings, then dispersed.
The solemnity of the long ritual, the weird chant and the plaintive accompaniment of the flutes running through the whole ceremony, while at the spring, coming up the hill, and to the last act before the Kisa, leaves the imprint of its strange musical vibration long after the scene has closed.
The legend back of this ceremony is a long account of the migrations of the Horn and Flute people.
It relates that when they at last reached Walpi, they halted at a spring and sent a scout ahead to see if people were living there.
He returned and reported that he had seen traces of other people.
So the Flute people went forth to find them.
When they came in sight of the houses of Walpi, they halted at the foot of the mesa, then began moving up the trail in ceremonial procession, with songs and the music of the flutes.
Now the Bear and Snake people who lived in Walpi drew a line of meal across the trail, a warning understood by many primitives, and challenged the new-comers as to who they were, where they were going, and what they wanted.
Then the Flute chief said, "We are of your blood, Hopi.
Our hearts are good and our speech straight.
We carry on our backs the tabernacle of the Flute Altar.
We can cause rain to fall."
Four times the demand was repeated, as the Flute people stood respectfully before the barrier of meal, and four times did their chief make the same reply.
Then the Walpis erased the line of meal and the Flute people entered the pueblo, set up their altars and demonstrated their rain magic by singing their ceremonial Flute songs which resulted in bringing the needed rain.
Then said the Bear and Snake chiefs, "Surely your chief shall be one of our chiefs."
Thus we see that the Flute Dance as given today is a dramatization of this legend.
Dr. Fewkes, who collected this legend, tells us that the Flute fraternity claims to be even more successful rain-makers than the world-famous Snake fraternity.
[26] [Footnote 26: Fewkes, J. Walter, The Walpi Flute Observance: Journal American Folklore, vol. 7, 1894. ] Dr. Monsen tells of seeing the Flute ceremony at Mishongnovi, a good many years ago, and of the deeply religious feeling that pervaded the whole scene.
His words are descriptive of a dramatic moment at the close of the day, when the procession had at last reached the public plaza on top of the mesa.
[27] [Footnote 27: Monsen, Frederick, Religious Dances of the Hopi: The Craftsman, vol. 12, 1907, pp. 284-285. ] [Illustration: Figure 7. --Hopi Girl in Butterfly Costume.
--Photo by Lockett.
] "By this time it was nearly dark, but the ceremony went on in the center of the plaza where other mysterious symbols were outlined on the rocky floor with the strewn corn meal, and numbers of supplementary chants were sung until night closed down entirely and the moon appeared....
Then came something so extraordinary that I am aware that it will sound as if I were drawing on the rich stores of my imagination, for the coincidence which closed the festival.
"But all I can say is that to my unutterable astonishment, it happened exactly as I tell it.
At a certain stage in this part of the ceremony there was a pause.
No one left the plaza, but every one stood as still as a graven image, and not a sound broke the hush, apparently of breathless expectancy.
The stillness was so unearthly that it became oppressive, and a few white friends who were with me began to urge in whispers that we leave the plaza as all was evidently at an end, and go back to our camp below the mesa, when suddenly there rang out such a wild, exultant shout of unrestrained, unmeasured rejoicing as only Indians can give in moments of supreme religious exaltation--raindrops had splashed on devout, upturned faces.
"Their prayers had been answered.
The spell of the drouth-evil had been broken, and the long strain of the solemn ceremonial gave place to such a carnival of rejoicing as it seldom falls to the lot of civilized man to see....
"From the white man's point of view, this answer to prayer was, of course, the merest coincidence, but not all the power of church or government combined could convince the Hopi that their god had not heard them ...
that their devotion to the ancient faith had brought relief from famine, and life to themselves and their flocks and herds."
The present-day Hopi, including the most intelligent and best educated of them, will tell you, that all their important dances and ceremonials follow faithfully the old traditions, and are still believed to be efficacious and necessary to the welfare of the people.
And this has been the conviction of a majority of the scientific observers who have studied them.
=Other Dances= There is a very definite calendar arrangement of these ceremonials, some variation in the different villages, but no deviation in the order and essential details of the main dances.
In December comes the Soyaluna, or winter solstice ceremony, to turn the sun back from his path of departure and insure his return with length of days to the Indian country.
Good-will tokens are exchanged, not unlike our idea of Christmas cards, at the end of the ceremony; they are prayer tokens which are planted with prayers for health and prosperity.
The kiva rituals are rich in symbolism and last eight days, if young men are to be initiated, otherwise four.
The public dance at the end is a masked pageant.
In January comes the Buffalo Dance, with masks representing buffalo, deer, mountain sheep, and the other big game animals.
Its chief characters are the Hunter and the Buffalo Mother, or Mother of all big game.
A prayer for plentiful big game is the idea of this dance.
In February the Powamu, "bean sprouting," ceremony occurs, with very elaborate ritual signifying consecration of fields for planting.
Various masks and symbolic costumes are used, and the children's initiation is accompanied with a ceremonial "flogging"--really a switching by kachinas.
Dr. Dorsey considers this the most colorful of all Hopi ceremonies and says that nowhere else on earth can one see in nine days such a wealth of religious drama, such a pantheon of the gods represented by masked and costumed actors, such elaborate altars and beautiful sand mosaics, nor songs and myths sung and recited of such obvious archaic character, containing many old words and phrases whose meaning is no longer known even to the Hopi themselves.
March brings the Palululong, "Great Plumed Serpent," a masked and elaborately costumed mystery play given in the kiva.
This shows more of the dramatic ability and ingenuity of this people than any other of their ceremonies; the mechanical representation of snakes as actors being one of its astonishing features.
One of the very pretty social dances is the Butterfly Dance, given during the summer by the young people of marriageable age.
Costumes are colorful and tall wooden headdresses or tablets are worn.
Figure 7 shows a Hopi girl acquaintance photographed just at the close of a Butterfly Dance that the writer witnessed in the summer of 1932 at Shungopovi.
(See Figure 8. ) This dance is really a very popular social affair, a sort of coming out party adopted from the Rio Grande Pueblos a good many years ago.
